"I thought it was a guy from my agency there to pick me up because he had a card with my name on it when I got off the plane," she told this week's edition of
The Edit
. "But then when I asked him questions, I realised he didn't know anything. I guess someone had seen me getting on the plane and he turned up there. I waited until a stoplight and then jumped out of the car.

At the time, Crawford was about to reach the height of her fame as one of the original 'Supers' alongside Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista and Tatjana Patitz, and had already appeared on countless magazine covers.

Now 47 and a married mother of two, the model admits it wasn't until she watched the 2008 film
Taken
starring Liam Neeson
,
about a man whose daughter is kidnapped, that she realised how serious the situation could have turned out to be.

Ten years later, in 1996, various tabloids reported that a gang of men had tried to kidnap Crawford in a similar situation at an airport and she was forced to "plead for her life", though this rumour was later rubbished.